You can love someone and feel hurt by them.
You can feel relieved and guilty.
You can want change and feel terrified of it.
You can feel proud of yourself and deeply sad at the same time.
From a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) perspective, this isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s a reality to learn how to hold.
We found in coping skills class this morning that when people are invited to notice mixed emotions, many instinctively go straight to what hurts the most right now—a moment where everything feels hopeless, heavy, or one-sided.
That reaction makes sense. When pain is loud, it takes up all the space.
All the more reason that this practice is about training the brain—slowly and safely—to tolerate emotional complexity.
For this, we begin with situations where mixed emotions are easier to see.
For example:
Becoming a parent can feel overwhelming and joyful, terrifying and meaningful.
A sibling can be deeply loved and incredibly irritating.
The loss of a loved one can bring grief and relief that they’re no longer suffering.
These examples are emotionally honest, but not overwhelming.
They help your nervous system learn a crucial lesson:
Two opposite feelings can coexist—and often have in your past.
Once the brain begins to recognize, through your intentional awareness to these moments, it learns that complexity is safe, and it becomes possible—over time and through repetition—to allow more than one truth even in darker moments.
Not because the pain disappears.
But because the mind has practiced making room.
This practice works not because contradictory emotions happened in the past, but because you are intentionally bringing awareness to them now.
When you pause to observe moments in your life where two opposite feelings coexisted—and name them with care—you are actively training your brain to tolerate complexity. The nervous system doesn’t distinguish much between emotions felt in real time and emotions re-experienced through memory; what matters is that you are noticing them without judgment in the present moment.
By deliberately drawing your attention to these examples, you’re strengthening the capacity to hold more than one truth at once. This is how the skill is built—not by waiting for mixed emotions to arise, but by practicing how to see and acknowledge them. The exercise that follows is simply a structured way to do that.
Exercise: Practicing Emotional Complexity
This is a noticing practice, not a problem-solving one.
You are not trying to change how you feel—only to train your brain to see more than one truth at a time.
Step 1: Choose an Easy, Obvious Example
Select a situation, event, or person from your past that naturally brings up more than one emotion.
Choose something simple and clear, not something that feels heavy or unresolved.
This does not need to be hard for the practice to work.
Examples:
The birth of a child
Starting a new job or leaving an old one
Beginning a new school or program
Moving to a new place
A meaningful relationship that wasn’t perfect
The goal is to make emotional complexity easy to recognize, not to push yourself.
Step 2: Bring the Event Into Awareness
Gently bring this situation to mind.
Using the feelings list:
Circle every emotion that feels even partly true
There is no limit—circle as many as apply
If you’re able to:
Print the list and circle the emotions for a more visual experience, or
Write the emotions down in a similar layout so you can see how spread out they are
Seeing the map” of emotions helps the brain register complexity more clearly.
Step 3: Notice the Contradictions
Look at what you selected.
Ask yourself:
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Are there emotions here that seem to contradict each other?
happy and afraid
grateful and sad
excited and overwhelmed
Simply acknowledge that they coexist.
No explaining. No fixing. No choosing sides.
Step 4: Stop There
That’s it.
The muscle is built by noticing, not by resolving.
Practice Over Time
Repeat this exercise once a day for 7 days:
Each day, choose a new situation
Keep it easy and obvious
Over time, you may notice something shift:
Your mind may begin to recognize emotional complexity even in current or heavier moments—without forcing it.
That’s the practice working.
Not because emotions changed.
But because your capacity to hold them did.
